‘Feminism’- a term that seems all too familiar and commonplace in today’s day and age. The word is bandied about like it’s nobody’s business, with everyone pronouncing their verdict on the issue as if it were an expert’s opinion. The problem with it, however, is that many of us, in fact most of us, fail to grasp the true sense of the word but nevertheless start of on a completely hysterical rant about how it should be practiced and preached.
To put it simply, feminism may be described as a range of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. As the Oxford Dictionary puts it, Feminism is “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of equality of the sexes.” Easy enough to understand, right? If only.
Society today is full of numbskulls that seem to misinterpret everything, no matter how clearly it is explained to them. As much as we’d love to believe that our nation is keeping pace with the changing global society, we still have leagues to cover before our understanding of various social phenomena adapts as the rest of the world’s has. Needless to say, this results in creation of two warring factions that choose to battle it out largely on social media platforms, thus making us witness to the mind-blowing stupidity that ensues.
The first group, which consists primarily of older generations, orthodox families, and people who’ve been living in caves or under rocks for the better part of the last few decades and have missed out on the evolution of society, in general. They are of the opinion that a woman’s only role in life is to stay home, look after the children, cook food and endure snide or sometimes openly sexist comments from the “men of the house”, arm-chair warriors famed for going to Bollywood movies just for the Item Numbers and sharing raunchy pictures and jokes on WhatsApp with their clique. Ironically, the only time they’re given any credit is when they give birth to a boy. The greatest torture of it all however for the females living in such homes is constantly having conversations such as, “You’re going out? That too on a Saturday night? With your friends? They’re girls too? Tauba Tauba! What has this country come to” with frequent editions of “When I was young…” (All accompanied by clicking of tongues and head shaking in unison by the clan elders)
The other factions, commonly termed the Feminazis, are just as extreme, only in the opposite direction. Rather than believing in equal rights for all, they’re believers in giving women everything. For instance, if a man and woman apply for the same job, and the man is better qualified for the same, they believe the woman should get it. Why, you ask? Because all men are chauvinist pigs who are only plotting the subordination of women in society and OH MY GOD I NEED TO POST THIS ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM! This section of people consists largely of teenagers or young adults (mostly women; shocker) who are just out of college, have had great epiphanies after reading up on the oppressed past of their gender which took place anywhere between thousands of years ago and say a few decades back, are over-exposed to social media, particularly other such like minded pages and people, and desperately need to breathe a little in life.
Sure, things are not ideal and the position of women in our society can still be improved a long way. A great step to achieve that however, would be to understand what it is you’re fighting for, rather than just latching on to the first thing you read and suddenly making it your life-goal to achieve that end. Logic always trumps brain-dead passion; there are a multitude of examples of it throughout history. What our country really needs is to strike a balance, to reach the ceteris paribus of affairs and understand that equality can be achieved at the mid-point of these disputing factions. The quicker we realize this, the sooner we as a society will actually be able to take concrete steps towards the realization of gender equality.
– Arjun Parmar (V-III)